


Princess Carry

by ka_tsu_ra



Category: Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, Super Sentai Series
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Series, my g-rated rampage continues unabated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 13:47:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4265466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ka_tsu_ra/pseuds/ka_tsu_ra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marvelous takes a spill down a hill that necessitates he be carried back up it. Because he has a complex, this necessitates a little emotional comforting on top of that.<br/>Written for a friend who requested a story in which Marvelous gets carried like a princess. I have no excuse, nor do I need one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Princess Carry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [labicheramure](https://archiveofourown.org/users/labicheramure/gifts).



It could be worse. It could be a lot worse. A point blank blast and the subsequent roll down the rocky hillside could have concussed Marvelous at the very least. He'd lived through worse, way worse, but Joe didn't regret leaving Gai and Ahim up top to deal with the Zangyack stragglers who'd missed the memo about the Empire's fall.

Marvelous was sitting up when Joe came swooping down for him, alive and lucid. He even grinned when Joe dropped his transformation and got down in the dust beside him, like he'd performed some fantastic trick and was duly proud of himself.

“Idiot.”

Marvelous shrugged and smiled wider to hide a grimace. He gripped one shoulder. Red peaked out from between his fingers. “Gai all right?”

“Gai's fine.” Gai could have handled the situation without Marvelous charging in, really, being a cannon with legs and powerful lungs. He plucked Marvelous' hand off his shoulder. “Lemme see.”

“It's nothing.”

“It's bleeding.”

Marvelous scoffed and fumbled with the buttons on his vest and shirt so the latter could slide a bit and reveal the broken skin and developing bruise underneath. “Satisfied?”

“How's your head?”

Marvelous ducked Joe's hand when he reached for him. “It's fine. Go give the others a hand.”

“Gai's got it.” Seeing as Marvelous wasn't cooperating, Joe got to his feet. “Let's head back.”

Marvelous didn't move. “You go on ahead.”

Joe rolled his eyes and held out a hand for him. “There's still Zangyack down here for all we know. Come on.”

Hesitation and aggravation flickered across Marvelous' face as twitches in the corners of his eyes and mouth, but he took the outstretched hand and got to his feet.

Or tried to. As soon as weight settled on his left foot he went right back down again with a sound that kicked a hole in Joe's guts. It was high and strangled, and it must have hurt Marvelous more to let it slip than it hurt Joe to hear it.

Joe tried not to let that knowledge show on his face. “Sit still.”

“Ouch.” Marvelous huffed the sound out and screwed up his face. “Jerk. I told you to go ahead so I could get it together.”

Joe was already unlacing Marvelous' boot and doing his best to ignore the captain's grumbling and intermittent pounding on his shoulder. “This isn't something you just get together.”

“It's not li- Hih!” A solid blow, not warning now but threatening, made Joe's shoulder's bob. “Be careful!”

“Same to you.” He was being careful, handling Marvelous' ankle with the same consideration he'd give someone not slamming a fist into his shoulder. The skin was already taut and too warm. It would bruise spectacularly. “Can you move it?”

Marvelous demonstrated that he could and Joe watched him twist and pale out of the corner of his eye. The ligament wasn't severed, obviously, but he wouldn't be getting back to the Galleon on his own power any time soon.

A telltale explosion sounded high up on the hill, and within moments Gai was waving down at them.

“Hey! All clear up here!”

Ahim appeared beside him shortly. “Is Captain Marvelous injured badly?”

“He'll live,” Joe called up. “Call the Galleon, we're coming up where we can get aboard a little easier.”

Gai saluted so hard Joe worried he might overbalance and go toppling down the hill himself. “Roger that!”

When Joe turned around again, Marvelous was glowering up at him. He'd never explicitly told Joe he hated looking up at anybody, but that much had always been obvious. That knowledge softened Joe's voice a little where worry and impatience tried to sharpen it.

“Come on,” Joe said, stooping beside Marvelous to tie his boots together and hang them off his elbow to tote them back. “You can't walk on that.”

“I can try,” Marvelous said. He didn't make any move to do so, which was a relief.

“You did and it didn't work.” He slipped an arm under Marvelous', looping it around his back. The other he scooped under his knees. Marvelous wasn't exactly heavy, at least not to Joe. Doc would probably teeter over trying to heft him and he wouldn't let Gai near him to try.

He was, however, very squirmy and very vocal. “Hell no! Put me down!”

He carried on to that effect as Joe started up the hill, and Joe bore it all in stoic silence until he started trying to worm out of his grasp in earnest. Joe tightened his grip around his chest, and Marvelous gasped and tensed and went very still. The fissure inside Joe split wider; he'd wanted to hold him fast, not hurt him into complying. Joe tried to tell himself the result was the same and the result was important, but the warm tackiness under his fingertips nagged at him.

“I'm sorry,” Joe said, once they'd made it halfway up the hill and Marvelous had unwound to lie limp and petulant in his arms.

“Don't worry about it.” Marvelous rolled his head to one side to rest his cheek on Joe's chest.

“I should have examined you more thoroughly.”

“Yeah, well, you didn't.” Marvelous was looking straight ahead, over Joe's shoulder, at the hovering ship. “So quit worrying about it.”

\---

With a cracked rib and a badly sprained ankle, Marvelous would be out of commission for at least a little bit depending on how seriously he took Doc's advice. For the time being he seemed content to sequester himself to his cabin where he could sulk privately.

When it came time to deliver his dinner, the duty naturally fell to Joe. Doc and Gai could make curry in hopes of buoying his spirits, but Marvelous might not admit either of them. Joe rested the covered tray on his hip as he knocked. And waited. And knocked again.

“Marvelous?”

The reply made up for the delay in forcefulness. “You're first mate, you can get it open whether it's locked or not. Just come in.”

It wasn't locked. “Just because I can doesn't mean I will,” Joe said as he strode into the room. Marvelous was a moody mess on his bed, half dressed and extensively bandaged with his injured foot propped up on two pillows. The way Marvelous pointedly looked at anything but him gave Joe pause. “What, are you going to act like me helping you up a hill when you're hurt is the same as busting into your cabin?”

Marvelous rolled his shoulders and pouted. He was, but he wasn't going to make a show of doing it.

“Doc made curry.” Joe handed him the tray. That got Marvelous' attention, if only for the moment it took him to get the cover off and dig into his meal. When he was sufficiently distracted, Joe settled on the very edge of the bed, sitting sidewise to observe him.

It took a full minute for Marvelous to notice and look up from his food. “What?”

“Nothing.” It was something, of course, chiefly the memory of effectively watching Marvelous die twice in as many days. That it was a bomb again hadn't helped.

“You're a crappy liar.” Marvelous spoke the words around a mouthful of food, but he'd found the decency – or the courage – to look at him. He even looked a little smug about it.

Joe thwapped him on the back of the head. To hear Doc tell it that was one of the few places he could get away with it, miraculously. “You know what it is.”

Marvelous was quiet. He didn't like knowing he worried people, which clashed horribly with his other hangups and bad habits.

“I'm going to worry about you.” They all worried about each other in varying degrees, but Marvelous didn't see that as a problem so he didn't need to hear it.

Marvelous covered his empty dishes and folded his arms. “I did fine taking care of stuff like this on my own. It's not a big deal.”

“Before me, you mean.” Joe gathered the tray up and set it aside on the floor.

“Yeah.” Marvelous was looking away again.

“But after everything else.”

No reply. 'Everything else' was still a sore spot. All of it. The Red Pirates, Basco, the months Marvelous spent aboard with only Navi around.

_Lonely! So lonely! Where did everyone go? He cried just like that!_

“You shouldn't have had to.”

Again, nothing. Joe frowned.

“Do you think Gai's weak now because of what happened today?”

The sheets rasped under Marvelous' subtle squirm. “No.”

“Then you're not weak either.”

“Mm.” Marvelous slid down into a more horizontal position and folded his arms – carefully – over his chest. “Is that all you came in here to say?”

“Yeah.” Joe waited a beat before he leaned over to kiss Marvelous very briefly on the mouth. Marvelous surprised him by sitting up to return the gesture so fast that their teeth knocked together and Joe recoiled. 

Marvelous grinned with his very red mouth and stretched as best he could. “I think I've earned an early rest. Good night, Joe.”

“Good night.” Joe paused in the doorway. “You should set yourself up on the couch tomorrow. The place is dull without you.”

Marvelous hummed, already drowsing. “Maybe I will.”

 


End file.
